On August 7, a putative class action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by plaintiff Nataly Cano Lopez against Miami-Dade County for allegedly printing more than the allowed number of credit card digits on traffic ticket receipts.  The complaint alleges that Miami-Dade and its software provider printed more than the last five digits of her credit card number, thereby violating the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, enacted in 2003.

Lopez claims that she received a receipt from the county in late July after paying for a parking citation with her credit card.  The receipt displayed ten digits of her 16-digit identification number.  She further alleges that there are more than tens of thousands of similarly situated plaintiffs who have been subjected to potential identity theft based on the county’s traffic ticket policies.  Her complaint alleges that Miami-Dade and the software company had actual knowledge of FACTA’s truncation requirement given their partial redaction of the credit card digits.  Moreover, she alleges that a coding paradigm could have easily deciphered the remaining digits of her credit card number, thereby exposing her to identity theft.

The class action requests that the court provide statutory damages in the amount of $1,000 for each willful violation of FACTA, as well as punitive damages, costs to cover legal fees, and injunctive relief prohibiting future violations.